The First Cause Argument: Causal Loop

The Causal Loop: An Argument against an Infinite Universe
Further Information about the First Cause Argument

In the First Cause Argument (FCA), I made the statement that an overall defense of the argument would be written in Part 2 and would help address the main challenges against it. Well, as you know it hasn't been written and the reasons are why I am writing this now - along with a few more articles. Simply put, to defend something you must know what you are defending. Without knowing the details of the argument I would serve an injustice instead of helping you understand the argument itself; supplying pithy statements over informed assessments. These following articles are written with a more in-depth look at each of the main arguments for the First Cause - starting with the Causal Loop.

An important point was made that something could not be prior to itself: an effect could not cause itself because it must be prior to itself– being false. Why is this false? Why does it matter? This is called the causal loop argument.

A Causal loop, as by its name, is based upon causations; that for each cause there is an effect, however, the difference lies within the idea of it being looped. For the older folks, you may remember in the Atari games once you achieved a certain level the game ‘flips or goes back to level zero and you start the whole process over. Lets take a circle as our example and specify a particular point on the circumference. The circle represents the infinite loop of causations and the specific point on the circle represents any specific cause or group of causes. What you will immediately notice is either way you go about the circle you come back to the same point – nothing is added and nothing is taken away.

This idea is not as complex as it may first seem, but a short story should clarify this. If you have seen any movies or read any books that consist of Time Travel you have heard these type of theories. A young man as he was growing up witnesses an assassination. His desire is to save this person, thus, in his future he desires to travel back in time. When he is sent back into time he walks into the room where the assignation plot were to happen. Instead of saving him, the person was killed because his entrance was believed to be by an intruder; thus being the inspiration of him traveling back in time.

What does this mean? Each cause or causes that that specified point represents must always be prior and later than its self at the same time – remember this is a circle and all direction is bent back to itself. The infinite causal loop defines that each effect caused itself and each cause affects itself simultaneously. The problem with this argument is there are no known, or possibly known, objects that are prior to itself – I was not alive before I lived, nor did I type this letter before it was typed.

For this idea to be correct, that there is a causal loop, the universe would have to have existed before it existed and exist after it existed at the same time. This cannot be so because there would be no origin, no causes, and no effects; all which are observable. Thus, our first substantiated premise for the First Cause Argument is that time arrows in one direction and is not looped.

The Debate Chronicles (I): The Bible Justifies Slavery

The Debate Chronicles (I): The Bible Justifies Slavery
Rom 2:11 - For there is no respect of persons with God.

The Atheist Assertions:
  1) The Bible condones slavery because the Bible doesn't specifically speak against it.
  2) Jesus, the Moral Teacher of Christianity, also did not speak against slavery.

Response:

The single greatest atrocity to plague human rights has held captive our past, gives strife to our present, and casts a veiled shadow to our future - Serfdom, Human Trafficking, Peonage, all are called Slavery. 

Since our discussion will mainly focus on Ethics, morality and value judgments, I will begin by explaining those three terms.

Ethics, the philosophic study of morality, values, motives, characters, and conducts, can be divided into two main sub-groups: Ethics and Meta-Ethics. Ethics, though possibly subjective, makes assertions based on objective Meta-Ethical statements. For example, we could argue that lying is Ethically wrong, but perhaps permissible if we saved the life of another, however, the term “wrong” is Meta-Ethically objective in its assertion of what “wrong” is; for it does not change in either decision.

My definitions for Meta-Ethics would be of Love:

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 - Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

My definition of the objective validity of Meta-Ethical Standards, I would quote:

Romans 2:12-15 12 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)

In following suite, my Ethical definition would be a specific application of love:

Mark 12:30-31 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Thus morality, or the proper behavior, would be defined only if there was agreement and correctness in my Ethical and Meta-Ethical statements, and my Value Judgment would be defined correctly by my assertion of what Slavery is.

My objective, by upholding both my Ethical and Meta-Ethical claims, is to counter-factually provide evidence that the Bible creates a strong case by labeling slavery as immoral. This, of course, could only be justified if Morality and Value Judgment would be in support of my Ethical and Meta-Ethical definitions and if the opposite could not be tenable under Biblical assertions.

Our conversation does not deal with the morality of Slavery, as we agree to its immorality – so no definition of that is needed- , but whether the Bible supports slavery either in practice or application. Your support for this claim amounts to two points. First, the Bible does not explicitly condemn slavery and, secondly, Jesus Christ, the Christian Moral Teacher, did not speak against it himself.

Your latter point, concerning Jesus Christ, is about as valid as citing that H.G. Wells, the father of the SciFi Genre and Scientist, must have wanted an iPad. Your warrant, that if someone does not speak upon a certain subject in his field he must support it, is altogether invalid and, as known prior, unsubstantiated.

This point also ties into your accusations against the Bible. If your evidence for Biblical slavery is concerned with no evidence against slavery then you have started with a faulty premise. However, the Bible does speak against slavery in the terms of moral application.

My definitions, as noted above, could not be upheld if Slavery were permitted. Slavery does not only violate both of my definitions because it is not love or doing unto others as done unto you– for if Slavery was love of another, there would be no issue –, but further, by upholding the objectivity stance of Meta-Ethics, slavery would be a direct argument against the whole of Christendom and philosophical thinking; being untenable to the contrary.

Whenever I study philosophy, or if you study any subject, one thing to remember is the difference between theoretical and practical applications. Thus, to show the practical or substantiated claims to my arguments, I will give a reference to four Christians, William Wilberforce, John Newton, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Rev. Jessie Jackson, who fought against slavery entirely on Biblical Principles.

“Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity, to extinguish the malignant passions; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties?” - Wilberforce

“God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.” - Wilberforce

In conclusion, in the Ethical manner we have approached this topic on slavery, we could not substantiate the support of slavery by Biblical moral assertions, the absent of specific words do not uphold an idea when the idea is condemned by other means, and, by the Christians themselves, we know they held pivotal parts in abolishing slavery. If anything could be noted, if anything could be taken away from our conversation, it is this: the Bible has always spoken upon the social justice of mankind, to do unto others as done unto you, and that all men are equal, indifferent, in the sight of God – this is not slavery but human equality.

The First Cause by St. Aquinas Pt.1/2

Argument for the First Cause - Part 1:2
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Gen 1:1 (KJV)

After reviewing some recent debates with respectable atheists, I found it necessary to bring the First Cause Argument onto this blog and give it some much-needed explanation.  (Besides – First Cause Argument -> First Topic post)

The First Cause Argument (FCA) was originally penned by St. Aquinas * in the Summa Theologica. This would later be the second of the Quinquae Viae (Latin, Five Ways) and is one of the most cited and, consequently, debated topic for the existence of God.  The FCA attempts to establish the idea that the universe, composed of contingent objects, must have a first cause that is not reliant upon other contingent objects.

While I wish to clarify FCA’s definitions, arguments, and conclusions, I am more concerned with providing the necessary tools to effectively combat the debate in favour of God’s existence and strengthen our faith. I will not defend against the counter-arguments towards the FCA; they will be addressed in part 2:2.

*Other variations have been written by Plato and Aristotle

Definitions:
Def 1: Cause – Something that brings an effect
Def 2: Efficient Cause - A prior condition, entity, or event considered to have caused the thing in question
Def 3: Intermediate Cause – A cause that exists between the efficient and ultimate cause.
Def 4: Effect – Something that is produced by a cause
Def 5: Ultimate Effect – The future effect
Def 6: Causation – Is the act or process of causing

The Cosmological Argument for the First Cause by St. Aquinas

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or one only. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.   – St. Aquinas, Summa Theologica (Pt.1, Q2, Art.3; pg 13)*, Quinquae Viae (Latin: Five Ways)

The Cosmological Argument Explained:

We are who we are, because we are what we were. This historical cliché states that civilizations and their people are conditioned by their predecessors in some way. A nation of war could have been a nation of defeat, or perhaps a nation of religious freedom was founded because of a prior nation’s religious suppression. Even technological advancements by prior minds affect generations to come.  You may not be familiar with a scythe nor a Beta Tape, but perhaps you use a tractor or Blu-ray device.
 
You may be wondering how this applies to the Argument for the First cause. To believe that we are who we were, is to believe that what we are today is attributed to times past; or our reliance upon prior beings. We have all heard of time marching forward, but we never speak of it as jumping up or diving below; even back-pedalling is contrary to what we understand.  In this, we see that time moves in one direction; if we are to trace contingent beings, we must start by going backwards. The Argument of the first cause, in other words, is the argument of reverse-sequence of all contingent objects (human and nonhuman).

We begin by addressing the dilemma of contingency.  In the universe, every object is finite and thus contingent, or reliant, upon prior objects.  There are no known objects, or possibilities of objects, who could be the cause of themselves – to be the cause of yourself would imply being prior to yourself, which is false.

Similarly, the cause of an effect cannot be the effect itself. For example, if I asked you why your ball is bouncing, you may respond, “Because it is red.”  But if I then asked, “Why is it red?” and your reply was, “Because it is bouncing,” your argument is invalid because of self-substantiating.

This begs the question, “Can there be an infinite regress of contingent beings?” We know that a cause can have an effect, and that effect, in turn, can cause another effect until the Ultimate effect, in a seemingly infinite future. However, does this concept apply to the past? The simple answer is no.

St. Aquinas, and later Modern Mathematical Set Theory, supported this answer by asking, “Is Infinity + 1 greater or lesser than infinity?” The answer is, “They are equal”. As Blaise Pascal, a French Mathematician, once stated, “The finite are annihilated in the presence of the infinite.” The impact of this argument is that if you remove the efficient cause – which an infinite past asserts - you lose all intermediate causes, which eventually would deny an ultimate effect.
  

If I said that turning on your car caused you to drive to the store, and driving to the store caused you to buy something to eat, the ultimate effect would consist of you no longer being hungry. In this chain of causations if I took away starting the car, then you couldn’t go to the store, which then you wouldn’t get something to eat, and thus the ultimate effect would be denied; you would still be hungry. The chain depends upon whether or not there is a first cause; this is where the infinite regression of dependent causes fail. You cannot maintain a necessary cause – a first cause - by adding a large group of contingent causes to already contingent causes.  It is similar to adding an infinite pile of apples to a box of apples to get an orange.

The finite is contingent, the contingent necessitates a non-contingent cause, and the non-contingent cause is God. This is the argument and its conclusion. Outside of all contingency there must have been a necessary cause that began our road. In the Beginning we are who we were because something began. And that beginning was created by God.
  

I hope this article provided more help than confusion, that you faith would be strengthen in understanding that God’s existence can be known and proven. Also, below I attached another example to further explain the relations of causes and effects.


Finite Chain Example:

Imagine sitting at a table with ten dominos standing, right up next to each other, upon the table’s surface  – we will call them D1, D2, D3… D10 – and I hit D1 over. What will happen? D1 will knock over D2, D2 will knock over D3, and this will continue until they knock over D10. This action, of all the dominos falling over, is our chain of causations (it began with me and ended with D10; our chain does not go on for infinity). Within this chain of causations (Def. 6), we have contained all the prior definitions. I was the cause (Def. 1) for D1 falling over, D1 falling over was the effect (Def. 4) of me pushing D1 over. The cause of D2 falling over was D1 falling over and the effect of D2 falling over is D3 falling over.  This system would continue until D10 fell over, completing our chain of causation. Now every cause (as we listed prior) from D1 – D9 are called intermediate causes (Def. 3) because they are neither the first cause nor the ultimate effect; the first cause is me, the ultimate effect is D10 falling over. Now here is the hard part. We would call everything falling over from D1 to D10, the Ultimate effect (Def. 5) of my pushing D1. Also all causes prior to D10 are efficient causes to D10 falling over (Def. 2 - so you would have 9 efficient causes including me because we are counting all causes before D10). This system can be calculated from any Domino. D9 would have 9 causes including me -you don’t count D9 as a cause of itself falling over – and 1 effect (the ultimate effect of D10 falling over). Likewise, D8 would have 8 causes and 1 effect ( the effect of D9 falling over and the ultimate effect of D10 falling over ), D7 would have 7 causes and 1 effect (the effect of D8 falling over and the ultimate effect of D10 falling over), D6 would have 6 causes and 1 effect (the effect of D7 falling over and the ultimate effect of D10 falling over), etc… This would continue until every domino was labeled properly.

*Summa Theologica - Copyright 1948 by Benziger Bros., New York, NY; Inquiries send to: Christian Classics, P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556

The Hobbit: Book Review

There and Back Again.... By Bilbo Baggins
(A Book Review of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien)

"So snow comes after fire and even dragons have their ending! I wish now only to be in my own arm-chair!" - Bilbo Baggins   Mr. Bilbo Baggins, taking to the usual smoking of his pipe and blowing rings in the bright early morning, believed life couldn't get any better. Between eating the many hobbit meals, six to be exact, collecting gossip about the, supposedly, private business of others, and enjoying the splendid gift giving and merry making, nothing seemed better. This is the story of Mr. Bilbo Baggins - or at least it was. For just down the road where he sat, a wizard, whose eyebrows bristled out past his wide brimmed hat and his staff which thudded along, was coming to give happy Bilbo a visit. Being the first book by J.R.R. Tolkien that I have read, I was very well pleased. The style was simple and the story fantastic. Though it was not such a labyrinth as other mysterious phantasy books, The Hobbit delivered an adventure as written through the eyes of a friend; and more closely the adventures of living as one. With a book of this sort, one must begin with the Title and storyline itself. J.R.R. Tolkien's title, "The Hobbit", and Bilbo's "There and Back Again..." are perfectly suited to tell the reader what to expect; the adventure of a Hobbit going There and Back again. However, soon before the closing pages, you will find that the letters, "There and Back Again..", were written with a heavy laden pen. It all began with twelve dwarves and an old grey wizard, at tea, pushing Bilbo out of his house and upon the road to retrieve the old dwarven treasures - Of course guarded by the evil dragon Smaug. Though his twelve dwarvish companions prove to be much more a problem than help, Gandalf, the wizard, played the guiding hand and ultimately the more mysterious of the characters. As they travel through thick and thin, mysterious and wondrous, to the last safe haven of Rivendell and to the more hostile Mirkwood Forest, Bilbo fights the idea of going back to the Shire and at every turn wishing to be in the comfort of his home. This constant fight to go home proves to be the bases of the story and moral: That an adventure worth going on always makes for a better story. Once Bilbo had finished his adventure, he struggled with accepting the idea of going home again. My remarks to the story and language are but short. The story was precise, easy to understand, and always kept you "in the know". Tolkien’s language was nothing short of praiseworthy of E.B. White and his belief in brevity and the use of simple language. But on the flipside, the story at times seemed too predictable and repetitive; a trouble came and a trouble went with almost no consequence and no surprise. Additionally, his use of the English language, I felt, though precise and understandable, were too constrained for the fantasy genre and may have limited some of Tolkien’s fantastic ideas and conceptions. These remarks hold a bit less value when being compared to the characters. Between Bilbo, the dwarves, and Gandalf, they were loveable, humours, and at most times very convincing. If Tolkien's idea was to keep your love for Bilbo, he did just that at the expense of the others. Gandalf was constantly leaving just before trouble and arriving just in time to save them, and the dwarves seemed too numerous and not enough character development to tell between any of them. As for the moral of the story. What more could a book be without a reason to read it? A boat without a captain seems unreasonable enough, but too many people seem to find a modern book without a moral necessary. They used to call them "children’s" books, which were devastating at best, but now they have got into being called "The Adult Section". If modern moral standards were to succeed, The Hobbit would be relocated to the philosophy and ethical section of any local bookstore. The story's moral hinges on a variety of levels – I will list a few. From Bilbo you are given the glimpse of everybody that has lived; to always want to be great and adventurous but never looking far enough (or in this case, close enough) and after, upon completing your task, wondering why it was hard to begin at all. The dwarves gave incite of what numbness of the mind could do, what working hard could accomplish, and how treasures can corrupt a just cause. Even Gandalf, as removed as he was, always proved to show what should be happening; if he was pushing Bilbo to continue, showing them the route best walked (though perhaps not the safest) or counseling the civilizations of others in courses of action. This book would have won my favour on this topic alone; most other books either lack morals or attempt to twist a farce into something profound. In all, the story and language kept this book distinct from all others and gave the reader a taste of things to come. The Hobbit, though it was known prior, doesn't act as the best stand-alone story - it is a wonderful and vast stage to give The Lord of the Rings. In all my personal taste, this is a wonderful book for all ages. I believe if you love The Chronicles of Narnia, the cherishing of simplicity, fantasy, and loveable characters, you will never stop reading The Lord of the Rings - And I loved The Chronicles of Narnia.